Students at the International Space School
http://www.intspaceschoolfnd.org/ spoke August 1 via ham radio to NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, aboard the International Space Station and at the controls of onboard ham station NA1SS. The contact was arranged via the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. The students gathered at the University of Houston in Clear Lake, Texas, for the contact, and Lu answered a dozen questions during the 10-minute pass. In answer to one question, Lu said being on the ISS had not altered his views regarding the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
“I’ve always thought that it would be pretty remarkable circumstances if we on Earth were the only life anywhere in the universe,” Lu responded. “The question is, ‘Where?'” Lu said the answer to the question of whether life exists beyond the bound of Earth “is profound either way.”
Lu also said he seems to be enjoying spicier foods more since he’s been aboard the ISS, but he was not able to figure out why that’s the case. Every day on the ISS involves solving a problem of one kind or another, he said, but he called being in space “quite an honor” and “a tremendous opportunity” and he predicted the day would come when more people got the chance to experience space firsthand.
Perhaps more than classroom work, Lu said, his experience as an aircraft owner helped prepare him for being in space. Being aboard the ISS “is a lot like working on the inside of an airplane or on the engine of an airplane in a lot of a cases, because the basic ‘wrench skills’ turn out to be quite a plus up here,” he said.
Since the ISS was passing over the Southern Hemisphere at the time, Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, in Australia–an ARISS veteran–served as Earth station for the International Space School contact. MCI provided a two-way audio teleconferencing link between Australia and Houston. ARISS http://www.rac.ca/ariss/ is an international program with participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.